> “It is not a metric that is attempting to define their worth as a person.”

Yet that’s literally the word being used.

Imagine if a language called men “the better sex.” One could argue that it’s just a word and people don’t take it for its literal meaning. But you’d wonder why people go along with that. Don’t they notice what they’re saying? That’s the feeling I got from “person X is worth $Y” back when I first heard it.

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gishh 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Net worth is purely about assets minus liability. “How many dollars are attached to your tax identity and how many dollars of stuff can be taxed”

It has zero to do with the value of the the life of a person. You can conflate the two if you’d like, you’re picking on shortcut verbiage so we don’t say a paragraph of disclaimer text before talking about net worth.

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pavlov 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m not conflating the two. I’m describing my experience encountering a culture that uses “worth” to mean the sum of a person’s material possessions. My own cultural background had primed me to think of these as entirely unrelated concepts.

You can argue it’s just a word, and that’s fine. There’s a whole another philosophical argument about if / how much words affect beliefs and actions.

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gishh 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is just a word, or rather a phrase. Words are given meaning by people.

You’re attaching a different meaning to the phrase than is intended by the user of said phrase. This is a “you” problem and not some moral quandary.

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kuerbel 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm also not a native speaker and wondering the same. Why is not called net wealth?

	▲	gishh 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One can be very wealthy and have zero net worth. Wealthy in family, security, etc. The net wealth of a toddler in perfect living conditions is almost infinite. Their net worth however, is 0.